Public Whip Count

March 14, 2008

Posted by: Chris

The latest twist in the saga concerning Sally Kern, the Oklahoma state legislator caught on audiotape giving a virulently anti-gay speech to fellow Republicans, is stranger than some of the fiction that has grown up around the story.

First there were stories on the Internet that Kern and her husband Steve, a Baptist minister, have an adult gay son named Jesse who they tried to "scrub" from her legislator biographical summary. Queerty then reported that a Jesse Jacob Kern had been arrested in June 1989 for attempted oral sodomy, obtaining money under false pretenses and driving under a suspended licenses. The first charge was dropped but Kern was convicted of the second and third. There was no confirmation that the two Jesse Kern's are the same person.

Now comes a report from the Tulsa World that Jesse Kern, the Kerns' 31-year-old son, is insisting he isn't gay but celibate:

Kern, who said he is affiliated with the Des Moines School of Metaphysics, said that he chooses to be celibate, but he is not homosexual.

"First of all, no one's sexuality is anyone's business. It is not even my mother's business," he said. "I practice celibacy to give to my God," he said.

Kern said metaphysics helps teach him such things such as concentration, which has helped him keep focused with all the adverse publicity surrounding his mother's comments. Kern said his mother's comments apparently were taken out of context. He has not chosen to listen to the audio version that has been disseminated widely throughout the nation. …

He said the purpose of sex is reproduction, and it is the function of the animal body.

"But we are more than animals, and we can use sex for a tool of deep relationship with another person."

Who knew that Denial was a river that runs through Oklahoma? Kern hasn't even listened to the audio of his mother's speech? And sex is an animal reproductive function divorced from emotion or any deeper connection?

How ironic that Sally Kern sees the "homosexual agenda" as such a huge threat when it is her own ignorant and prejudiced religious-based views that have apparently pressured her son into a life that almost none of us would agree is full and fulfilling.